Trout Stocking

The Environment Agency in England and Wales now requires all farmed brown trout stocked into rivers and some lakes to be infertile (triploid). These regulations were put in place in January 2015. Details are on the EA website archive — click here.

Farmed trout stocked into rivers must be infertile (triploid) to prevent them breeding with wild trout.

The Wild Trout Trust is often asked for advice relating to the introduction of farmed trout (stocking) to rivers. Please do contact us for informed advice and comment; we often hear the same reasons given by different people for wanting to continue to stock rivers with fertile farmed brown trout. Click here to download a PDF of common questions and answers.

We have produced a position statement with a list of references, and also a concise summary document to help people make an informed decision about stocking and the protection of wild brown trout. The document was prepared by Dr Paul Gaskell with assistance from other WTT staff and our volunteer Advisory Panel, and published in May 2012.

Our experience is that many fisheries can become wild trout fisheries, and this is achieved by spending money on habitat improvement rather than farmed fish for stocking, and using catch and release. The Wild Trout Trust will help you to find and use those opportunities.

However, we do recognise that some clubs feel they absolutely must stock to overcome a complete lack of habitat or to support catch and kill angling. In this case, our advice is :

Make adult habitat as good as possible in order to retain stock fish on your reach

Use marked sterile (triploid) stock fish

Set realistic numbers for stocking – no more than 1 fish per 50m2 of total river area.

Stock small batches of fish frequent intervals.

Have designated stocked areas that cater for members who wish to catch and kill fish

Maintain catch and release, wild fish only reserve sections

Remove as many stock fish as possible at the end of the season. Do not feed fish over winter.

Team up with other clubs on your river and have a ​‘joined up’ stocking policy

Case studies

A number of angling clubs the Wild Trout Trust have worked with have taken the decision to cease stocking or reduce the numbers of fish introduced to their rivers. We asked them to provide case studies of their experiences describing how and why they took the decision and what the results have been. Click on the links below for each case study (pdf documents or videos).

Salisbury and District Angling Club. A large club of 2,200 members with extensive chalk stream fishing in Wiltshire. This is a video of a talk given by Andreas Topintzis at the 2016 WTT Annual Get Together. An interesting (and amusing) story of big changes to a large club.